From all the noise you’re surrounded by, you may never be able to silence it with your power or influence, but you have the opportunity to listen carefully. To look for the signs—and for their words. Sounds are shapeless beauties, even the worst among them. We interpret them based on our past experiences. There’s a reason you are drawn to a certain family of sounds and not to others. A musical piece is like a family—precisely ordered. When a sound is unfamiliar, if it aligns with your personality, mood, or experiences, you may begin to like it because it expresses what you couldn’t vocalize—or perhaps what you haven’t experienced yet, but long to.
Words are meaningful because they are familiar sounds. We understand them because we have spent time repeating and storing them in our memory. There’s a reason memory doesn’t retain everything. Perhaps it’s because, if it did, we might remain stuck in the past. Memory selectively stores what you wish to keep, while letting the rest fade away.
What we see can become sound, and what we hear can be seen. It all exists in our brain—we just need to imagine. Our sensorimotor system is flexible and capable of channeling distinct sensations into one another. Let me simplify this for you: try to recall the memory of hugging someone you love. The feeling of another person’s body transferring its warmth to your chest and arms; sensing their beating heart and the kiss they placed on your cheek—was that merely the somatic sense of touch? No—it was like music. You could hear it in your heart. You could even smell the warmth and excitement. Didn’t you want to drink their smile?
I don’t think we can examine the human sensory system in a reductionist way. It is intricately wrapped up with the nervous system in ways that are difficult to describe. As humans, we have not yet reached the level of knowledge needed to rationalize everything. Don’t forget—science is a tool, and because of its limitations, it can sometimes be inadequate.
When I was a child, my question was, “Why do all songs happen to be about love?” And perhaps the answer is this: because love is everywhere. When you look into the mirror and smile genuinely, when a bird begins to chirp in spring, when a young person offers their seat to someone older on the bus, when you ask your mother or father about other family members, when a newborn lies in its mother’s arms—that is all love. Love is not limited to young people kissing lips to lips. Open your eyes—it’s everywhere.
Kierkegaard in his book ““Works of Love” describes love as follow:
“Love is a matter of conscience and thus not of impulse. It is a duty. To love is duty.”
By “conscience“ he refers to the deeper inner moral awareness or obligation. He claims: Love, in its truest form, doesn’t depend on how we feel in the moment. It’s not about emotions, passion, or romantic attraction. Those come and go. Instead, love is tied to our moral responsibility—our inward commitment to the good.
He contrasts conscience with impulse, meaning love isn’t just a spontaneous emotional reaction. If love were only impulse, it would be unreliable, inconsistent, and self-serving.
Think about how often people say, “I just don’t feel it anymore.” Kierkegaard is pushing back hard on that. He’s saying that true love doesn’t evaporate when the feelings do, because it wasn’t based on feelings in the first place.
He says: To love truly is to choose, again and again, to act with care, concern, and devotion—regardless of how you feel.
Then he describes the being of who has rejected existence of Love:
“To cheat oneself out of love is the most terrible deception; it is an eternal loss for which there is no reparation, either in time or in eternity.”
when we withhold ourselves from love, we aren’t just missing out on a life experience—we are betraying our own deepest capacity. And it’s the most terrible because it’s self-deception. You trick yourself into thinking that not loving is safer, more rational, more secure—but in doing so, you miss the very thing that gives life meaning.
He often warns about self-deception as the worst kind of despair: when you think you’re protecting yourself, but you’re really cutting yourself off from what matters most.
And if you shut yourself off from love, you lose something irreplaceable. Not just for this life, but for eternity. Why? Because love is eternal. It connects us to the divine, to other people, and to our true selves. To miss love isn’t just to miss out on happiness—it’s to miss out on the very purpose of existence.
Once that moment of love is passed—once that door is closed—you can’t go back and reclaim it. Even God doesn’t undo the fact that it wasn’t chosen.
He add more precisely how and where love lives:
“The hidden life of love is in the inner being, and the inner being is in love’s hiding place. But when love does not find a hiding place in the inner being, it will not hide at all—it will vanish.”
He is saying that real love lives deep within us—in the inwardness of the soul, not in loud declarations or showy gestures. This inner love is: “Quiet, Steady, Sincere and Rooted in character and commitment”.
He depicts this part beautifully: Just as love hides in us, we also hide in love.
It’s reciprocal: Love needs a safe space inside us to take root and grow, and our true self finds its home within that love. It’s a sacred, mutual relationship between our innermost self and the deepest form of love.
But love doesn’t grow in everyone’s heart. If your heart is full of: “Pride, Envy, Vanity, Restlessness, Need for validation” then love has nowhere to live. It’s not protected. It’s exposed to the world—and it can’t survive that way.
If love has nowhere to hide, it doesn’t just become visible—it disappears. Love needs stillness, humility, inwardness. It gets lost in noise, distraction, comparison, ego. It fades.
And I think with this sentence he makes his statement on Love clear and pure:
“Works of love are not merits, but they are expressions of love.”
By “not merits,” he means that acts of love aren’t things we do to gain reward, praise, or moral credit. Works of love are expressions—natural outpourings—of a deeper, inward love. If you truly love, acts of kindness, forgiveness, generosity, or sacrifice aren’t forced; they flow from who you are. They’re the fruit, not the proof.
With this interpretation, the “works” that spring from this love should come without expectation—done in secret, done for the beloved’s sake, done even when difficult.
So While love is invisible, it doesn’t stay hidden. It shows itself in acts—small and large. “Works of love” are visible signs of an invisible reality.
A metaphor: Think of love like a flame in the heart. The “works of love” are like the warmth and light that naturally radiate from it. You don’t light a fire to produce warmth as a separate goal—you light it because warmth is what fire gives. In the same way, love expresses itself through action, not because it must, but because it is.
Closure:
You need to look more closely. Our perception is circumscribed and can be tricked easily.
